Based on John Hughes’ short story Christmas ’59, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation – the third film in the Vacation series – was released in 1989 to great acclaim.
Made on a budget of just $41.7 million, it went on to gross more than $110 million in the US alone during its theatrical release and, over the years, became a bonafide Christmas classic.
From on-set mishaps to casting changes and personality clashes, we reveal just some of the secrets from the holiday favourite.
DOUBLE TAKE
If the Griswold family home looks familiar, that’s because it also featured in TV series Bewitched. Located on the Warner Bros backlot in Burbank, California, the set was also used in comedy series The New Gidget.
The home belonging to neighbours Todd (Nicholas Guest) and Margo Chester (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is where Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) resided in Lethal Weapon.
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A CLASH OF EGOS
In a last-minute change of directors, Chris Columbus was replaced by rookie Jeremiah Chechik after butting heads with star Chevy Chase.
“It was fraught with pain and tension with Chevy Chase, but I needed the job desperately,” Chris told Business Insider. “At the time, I was living with my wife’s parents. It took everything in my power to convince myself to resign from Christmas Vacation because I couldn’t make the movie with Chevy Chase.”
Christmas Vacation marked Jeremiah’s directorial debut, despite him never having watched the first two films.
“I was nervous about accepting it,” he said. “But I agreed to do it, and I had just a fantastic time doing it.”
THE ROTATING CAST
As with each of the earlier films, the Griswold children were recast for this third film.
“The fact that the Griswolds have a new set of kids each time became a thing,” Juliette Lewis, who took over the role of Audrey, told Rolling Stone magazine. “Your agents couldn’t explain why it was acceptable; it just is.”
Interestingly, while in Vacation and European Vacation Rusty is the older sibling, in Christmas Vacation, Audrey somehow becomes the older of the two!
TRAGEDY ON SET
They say never work with animals and when it came to filming the squirrel jumping out of the Christmas tree, it was far from smooth sailing. The day they were supposed to film, the trained squirrel died.
“I said, ‘Holy f–k, we’re shooting that today!’” Jeremiah reflected. “And the animal trainer turned and said, ‘Ya know, they don’t live that long.’ We still had to shoot the scene, so we used an untrained squirrel. It was just total chaos.”
A HELPING HAND
Even the best actors need a little help sometimes. When it came time for Chevy to deliver his expletive-ridden tirade after Clark was stiffed on his big Christmas bonus, his co-stars wore giant cue cards around their necks.
“The rant was divided up into sections so that he could go all the way through from the beginning to the end without a chance of forgetting his lines,” Beverly D’Angelo, who played wife Ellen, told The Dinner Party Download.
“If you watch it you can see him. His eyes go from character to character as he’s going on in the speech because we’ve got the lines there.”
